


Territory, Part One:  Trouble at Bloody Mary's

by Malkin Grey (malkingrey)



Series: Arkham Futureverse [5]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe, Future Fic, Gen, implied offstage violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-28
Updated: 2009-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-03 22:17:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malkingrey/pseuds/Malkin%20Grey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fourth in the sequence that begins with <i>Hello, Stranger</i> and continues through <i>Black Ink and Candlelight</i> and <i>Green, With an Axe</i>.  Fifth story in the Arkham Futureverse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Territory, Part One:  Trouble at Bloody Mary's

**Author's Note:**

> Bless me, father, for I have sinned. I have committed AU Futurefic and OFC, not to mention other crimes beyond counting. This set of stories was begun in the summer following the sixth season of BtVS, in the full knowledge that it would be thoroughly Jossed as soon as the seventh season began. Readers are therefore invited to consider it as taking place in the World Without Shrimp, or in one of the many other possible Buffyverses.

Extracts from the Private Journal of Victoria Matheson-Quinn  
Apartment 10-E  
University Towers North  
Arkham, Massachusetts

July 9, 2032  
6:17 AM

Arkham's not the largest city on the east coast, but it's big enough that I can't hit all its danger spots in a single evening. Back at the start of summer, Spike and I worked out a division of the territory -- it took us a map, a public-transit master timetable, and a box of colored highlighters, not to mention the best part of a weekend, and after we'd done all the hard work, Dr. R. used the apartment's household organizer to come up with a randomized patrol schedule. She's got it displayed on the refrigerator door right next to the grocery list.

Last night was Demontown's turn. I thought I'd check out the dark alleys and the ambush zones for signs of trouble, then take a stroll through the bright lights and chat with any locals who felt up to making conversation. A surprising lot of them do these days, ever since Spike and I took out the Righteous Warlord of the Eastern Frontier and got a mostly-undeserved rep for defending Arkham's demonic population against big nasties from out of town.

Deena came with me as far as her grandfather's place on Waiteley Street. I'd spent the afternoon helping her study for placement exams -- science and history, mostly. Her math is already better than mine, and she nailed the required reading list for the literature exam while she was still a kid in her own dimension.

"My grandfather used to send me books," she explained. "My family didn't like it -- they could see already that I would grow up strong, and of an excellent greenness, fit to catch the eye of a Warlord -- but he sent them a great deal of _snlrr_ also, and they feared that if I complained about them too much, he would stop."

"What's _snlrr_?"

"Like your currency, only not." Deena was wearing her human face at the moment, since we hadn't yet reached Demontown, which meant that she looked like a brown-skinned teenager with long hair in a lot of tiny braids, instead of a five-foot-five praying mantis in blue jeans. "For sending increase of wealth across the border."

"Interdimensional money orders," I said. "Huh."

I left Deena at her grandfather's -- she works the counter during the after-dark rush -- and headed out to make a sweep of the neighborhood. The summer heat makes even the vamp population lazy; the hunting pair I spotted stalking a lost tourist barely put up a fight. I staked the one who'd already gone game-faced and ready to pounce, then got the other one in a come-along hold and marched him over to Bloody Mary's.

Lizzie the vamp-madam looked at him like he was a dead rat I'd dropped onto her nice clean floor. "Not another damned out-of-towner."

"That's right," I said. "Caught him and a pal going for snackies down by the transit stop."

"I suppose you want me to explain to him how we do things around here."

"Yep." I pulled a crumpled twenty out of my pocket and passed it over to her. "Feed him up first, in case he's too hungry to think straight, then give him the talk."

Most vamps, given a choice between the club scene at places like Bloody Mary's and the sharp end of a pointed stake, are bright enough to pick the sensible alternative. I could count on Lizzie to tell the new boy about our local ways -- and to tell me later if she didn't think the explanation took.

Bloody Mary's was my last stop for the night. I went home, checked off the July9/Demontown box on Dr. R.'s refrigerator list, and went to bed.

July 9, 2032  
11:56 PM

In the middle of summer biology class my wristwatch started to vibrate -- passing along a signal from the phone in my backpack, which technically I wasn't supposed to have with me in school in the first place. Dr. R. had nodded and looked thoughtful when I told her about the rule. Then she'd gone off to the university robotics lab with a cheap phone and the good wristwatch I'd gotten from Poppa on my last birthday, and had come back later with the two-part vibrating special.

"Are you going to use the phone to deal drugs, arrange illicit liaisons, or commit terrorist acts?" she'd asked me.

"Um . . . no?"

"Good. Keep it inside your backpack except for emergencies, and don't get caught."

And that was that.

Since I couldn't do anything about the phone during class, I ignored it, and after about a minute the vibration stopped. As soon as I got a chance, though, I ducked into the girls' bathroom and checked to see if the caller had left a message.

It was Lizzie the vamp-madam. "Call me as soon as you can. We have a problem."

We probably did, considering that this time of day was -- for a vamp, at any rate -- more like the middle of the night. Either Lizzie had stayed awake on purpose to make the call, or we were dealing with something nasty enough to bounce her right out of bed.

I called her back from the transit stop on my way home to University Towers. She answered on the first ring.

"Bloody Mary's." Vamps in the daytime sound grouchy and sleep-deprived -- well, Spike not so much, but he's a master vampire and well into his second century.

"What's up?" I asked. "Does our friend from last night need to be taken care of?"

"No, he's good. This is something else."

"What kind of something?"

"I can't explain right now. I need you to come by here as soon as you can after sunset -- and bring Spike with you."

"We'll be there," I promised, and hit the button to end the call just as the transit car slid into the station.

We were now officially looking at serious trouble. Lizzie may have a healthy respect for the Slayer, but she's scared to death of Spike.

I phoned home and left a message for Dr. R. -- "I'm checking out a problem at Bloody Mary's; if things look like running past dinnertime, I'll let you know" -- before setting out for Demontown.

Collecting Spike was the first step. He has the basement apartment in a brownstone town house that was probably a fashionable address a century and a half ago. Most of the other tenants are university students; so far as I know, they think Spike is chasing a graduate degree in something or other. I've never been inside.

I'd called ahead this time, so he was waiting for me in the shadows by the front steps. I was wondering how he planned to handle the long stretch of daylight between his place and Demontown -- but I didn't expect to see him pop open an umbrella. Not one of your cheap April-shower models, either, but a heavy-duty antique that looked like it had been engineered out of steel and canvas by some guy who went on to build suspension bridges across major inland waterways.

"Don't tell me," I said. "Let me guess. You have a terrible sun allergy."

He grinned at me. "Got it in one."

"That's not an umbrella, you know. That's a tent on a stick."

"Go ahead. Mock the individual suffering from a chronic debilitating skin condition. See what it does to your karma."

We made it to Bloody Mary's a few minutes before sunset. Bruno the Bouncer let us in. Bruno's a big ugly vamp -- the first time I saw him I swear I thought for a moment that somebody had turned the silverback mountain gorilla at the Arkham Zoo -- but he's as close to sweet-tempered as a vampire is likely to get.

"Where's Lizzie?" I said.

"Upstairs in Four-Twelve." His heavy brow furrowed. "It's real bad, Slayer."

"Don't worry. Spike and I will take care of it."

We went up the service staircase to the top floor. As soon as we were outside of vampire hearing range, Spike said, "Bit of a sweeping promise you made back there."

"You're the one who always says to keep up a bold front."

"Some things not even a bold front can help you with," he said. "This is starting to smell like one of them."

"Please tell me you don't mean that literally," I said.

He didn't answer. By the time we reached the closed door to the room where Lizzie was waiting, he didn't have to. I could smell the blood myself.

Inside the room it was worse.

I'm the Slayer; I know all the ways there are to kill vampires. A stake to the heart or an injury that cuts the connection between head and body will turn a vampire to dust in an instant; sunlight and fire and holy water will burn one to ash if the flames aren't put out.

Whoever had -- injured -- the vampire laid out on the bed in Room Four-Twelve had been real careful not to do or use any of those things.

Lizzie was sitting in a straight-backed chair next to the bed. "Slayer," she said. "Spike. You understand why I wanted both of you to see this."

"Um," I said. I was breathing through my mouth, trying not to smell anything more than I had to, and watching Lizzie so I wouldn't have to look at what was on the bed. "No."

"Spike's an Aurelian," Lizzie said, as if that explained everything. "One of the old lines."

She'd mentioned that fact to me once or twice before -- along with the possibly-less-factual (but then again, maybe not) assertion that vampires from the Order of Aurelius tended to be crazier than bedbugs and mean as sin. But right now didn't seem like a good time to bring that up.

"The Order and I parted ways a long time ago," Spike said.

"That doesn't change what was. You still know things the rest of us don't. I need you to tell me straight -- is Nathan coming back from this or not?"

Spike gave the bloody mess on the bed a long, considering look. "Without help? Not all the way."

"What kind of help are we talking about?" Lizzie asked.

"Heavy stuff; sire's blood and dark rituals. I don't know if you've got a competent spell-caster on hand--"

"It wouldn't matter even if we did. Nathan's the senior member of his line, such as it is. Whoever sired him has been dust for a long time now."

"Right, then," said Spike. He turned to me. "Go ahead and put the poor bastard out of his misery."

"Me?" I said.

"You're the Slayer; let him go by your hand. Give him an excuse to hold up his head in Hell."

July 15, 2032  
12:09 AM

It's been six days since I dusted Nathan, and the whole town is so quiet it makes me jumpy. I haven't heard from Spike since he left me at the back door of University Towers afterward. He said, "Tell Red I have some work to do, might take a day or so and not to worry," then did his fade-into-the-night routine and I haven't seen him since. I asked Dr.R. what she thought he was up to, going off like that, but she just shrugged and said, "Spike's being Spike again. Sometimes he likes being dramatic and mysterious a bit too much for his own good."

She's more concerned than she lets on, though. The last couple of days, she's left her printouts back at the lab and started reading things from her home files instead -- image scans and text screens that she closes down when she thinks I might be looking at them. If I asked her about it, she'd probably pretend that it was pornography or something, but I know better than to ask. The way Spike tells it, Dr. R. did a lot of magic stuff back in the olden days, before she got scared of something and gave it all up. I'm starting to think she might not be scared of it any more.

Tonight on patrol I asked Deena and her grandfather if they'd heard anything about Spike on the Demontown gossip channels, but they both said the same thing, that he hadn't been seen around Arkham since last Friday.

That's the thing about vampires, you know. If they're not right there in front of you, they could be dust for all you'll ever be able to find out.

July 16, 2032  
7:45 AM

I was right to be worried. Spike's back, and it's bad. He showed up at University Towers last night, sometime between midnight and the early dawn, cut all to pieces and looking like hell.

I almost didn't find out about it, either. He must have called Dr. R. on her private phone and asked her to let him in, because I never heard the doorbell ring. But Slayer hearing is almost as keen as a vampire's, and I'm a light sleeper. I woke up to the sound of voices in the kitchen -- that low, don't-wake-the-children murmur that never means anything but trouble -- and was out of bed and dressed in a heartbeat, and lurking just out of sight in the hallway an instant later.

Spike was sitting at the kitchen table, with his shirt off and a tall glass of something red and viscous next to his hand. The liquid in the glass was the same color as the stuff that was still oozing from the welts and slashes on his back and arms and chest, and a blank-minded second or two later my sleep-fogged brain caught up with the rest of me and said, _That must be blood._

Dr. R. had a bowl of water and a sponge, and was washing it all off of him -- the fresh red stuff, which was disturbing enough, and the brick-brown stuff, which had to be hours or maybe even days older, which made it somehow even worse -- and she was ranting at him as she worked.

"...stupid, _stupid_ thing to do. What in the name of Hecate did you think that you were going to accomplish?"

"Told you. Needed information, had to go to the source to get it."

I gave up lurking after that, coming out into the light and fixing him with my best I-want-answers-mister glare. "And whose idea was it to beat you up first?"

Dr. R. looked over at me. "Go back to bed, Victoria."

"Don't think so," I said. I pulled out a chair at the other end of the table and sat down in it, still facing Spike. "This is all about what happened with Nathan, isn't it?"

"Victoria--"

"Let her be, Red. She's right."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," I said. "Or maybe not, if you think I'm that easy to distract with flattery. Who was it that beat you up?"

He sighed, then picked up the glass of blood and drained it before he spoke. "Like I was telling Red, here, before you walked in -- I needed some information, and the people who had it weren't inclined to give it to me even if I did ask nicely."

"What kind of people?" I asked him, at the same time as Dr. R. said, "What sort of information?"

"Vampires," he said. "Members in good standing of the Order of Aurelius. They weren't keen on the idea of sharing family secrets with one of the Order's most notorious renegades. So I had to convince them."

"Delicate negotiations, vampire style?" I asked.

He gave me a tired grin. "Like that, yeah."

"If the pair of you could abandon your mutual admiration society long enough to answer a few simple questions -- " Dr. R. sounded like she was about to lose patience with someone, or possibly with two someones, if we didn't get to the point soon enough to satisfy her.

Spike closed his eyes and leaned his head back with a sigh. "Give me a minute to get my thoughts together, would you . . . do you have anything in the house to drink?"

He was stalling; even I could figure out that much. Dr. R. didn't bother calling him on it, though. She emptied the bowl of blood-tinged wash water into the sink, then went over to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of vodka I'd never even noticed was in there.

She uncapped the bottle and put it down on the table by Spike's left hand, still not saying anything. He poured vodka into the empty water glass until the level nearly reached the brim, then drank about half of it in one long swallow.

"Right," he said. "About Nathan. What happened to him -- it worried me from the start. Not the _how_ of it -- I've done as bad or worse in my time, lost the right to be shocked by it long ago -- but the _why_."

Dr. R. was already nodding as if what Spike had said made perfect sense, which stuck me with asking the obvious question. "What do you mean, 'the why'?"

"One of two reasons, usually, for a thing like that," he said. "Either somebody wanted to get even, or somebody wanted to have fun."

"Fun," I said. "Right."

"Tastes differ," said Dr. R. "And we are dealing with vampires here. Pain and damage . . . not as big an issue. Fortunately for some idiots I could name."

Spike's ears and cheekbones pinkened almost imperceptibly. With his fair coloring, back in his living days he'd probably worn all his emotions right out where the world could see -- I could imagine how much he must have hated it. But he ignored the interruption and went on.

"Nathan wasn't a world traveller, like some vamps; he was born, bred, and turned right here in Arkham. There's no way he could have made an enemy in this town and not have Lizzie know about it."

"And she'd have known about the fun thing, too," I said. I looked at Spike and Dr. R. "Hey -- I have to check out Bloody Mary's every time Demontown comes up on the patrol roster. I know what sort of stuff goes on in there."

"And a profoundly disturbing thought that is," Dr. R. said. "I don't know what your father is going to say about it when he gets back . . . go on, Spike. If we rule out revenge and pleasure as motives, what's left?"

"Ambition," he said.

This time Dr. R. looked blank, which was comforting. So I said, "Huh?" to spare her the trouble, and waited for Spike to explain.

"Lizzie told us that Nathan was the eldest in his line," Spike said eventually. "Not a power in the city -- Arkham's vamps have always liked to keep a low profile -- but definitely a permanent fixture of the local establishment. Taking him out of the picture was the same as warning everyone that there's going to be some changes made."

I said, "I hate to tell you this, Spike, but all it takes to turn a vampire into a permanently missing person is a quick stake-and-poof. So why was Nathan skinned and gutted and left for undead in a back room at Bloody Mary's?"

"To make certain that I knew about it," he said. "And to make certain that everybody in Demontown knows that I know about it. Because any vampire who's thinking about setting up shop as a Master in Arkham has to get me out of the way first."

Dr. R frowned at him. "Don't they know you're one of the good guys now? An independent-contractor-type good guy, but still -- "

"That doesn't matter," he said. "What matters is that -- renegade or no -- I'm also the only member of the Order of Aurelius currently holding court between Charleston and the coast of Maine."

I didn't like the sound of that at all, and it looked as if Dr. R. liked it even less. She was still frowning when she said, "I'm guessing that 'currently holding court' is a technical term, here, and not just a figure of speech."

"That's right. The Order doesn't care -- much -- whose side I'm on. As long as I'm claiming the right to dispose of other vampires in this area as I see fit, so far as they're concerned I'm the sodding Master of sodding Arkham."


End file.
